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Symbolic Links on WHS?

Domanda

I have been using symbolic links in Vista to organize a set of folders from many locations into one structure on my PC. Is there an equivalent way to do this inside a WHS shared folder? I tried using 'mklink' to create links on the server but I get 'access denied' even on folders that I have full control over. There doesn't seem to be a 'mklink' on the server so I can't run it from there. I'm not sure if I'm having a security problem or you just can't create links on a share.

I\ve tried using shortcuts but it seems that very few applications will follow shortcuts. Ideally, I'd like to have one shared folder that consolidates files and folders from several other shared folders (without actually duplicating the data). If I could create links that stayed in the same shared folder, that would be OK.

Risposte

Ken, you can create hardlinks (but not symbolic links, at least not with tools available by default on Windows Server 2003) in the folders that lie behind the Windows Home Server shares, but FSUTIL et al only work with local paths, not with UNC paths. That means that you have to manipulate files in the file system directly on the server, which is unsupported. In addition, a fast test suggests that creating a hardlink has the potential to confuse Drive Extender, the technology behind the Windows Home Server shares. So I would have to recommend against this.

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I don't know if there's any risk in using this on WHS, files in the shares (on the WHS D partition) are already organised using reparsepoints which point to the one or two actual storage locations. You may want to read Drive Extender technical brief first.

Ken, you can create hardlinks (but not symbolic links, at least not with tools available by default on Windows Server 2003) in the folders that lie behind the Windows Home Server shares, but FSUTIL et al only work with local paths, not with UNC paths. That means that you have to manipulate files in the file system directly on the server, which is unsupported. In addition, a fast test suggests that creating a hardlink has the potential to confuse Drive Extender, the technology behind the Windows Home Server shares. So I would have to recommend against this.

My background story:I have just spent 7-8 hours(!!) with *all* shares offline while WHS "removes" a single 500gb USB drive (75% full, +1.5tb free in pool, all other disks SATA or FW). I am getting rid of all external disks from pool since WHS chokes on them (consumes ~97-98% memory for cache when extracting/doing readwrite/modify files on a duplicated share located on USB volume which makes WHS *totally* unresponsive sometimes). In stand alone-mode external (USB) disks work very fine when demigrator is no longer toying with them so I can still use them for a manual managed archive with important files I wish to save but do not need online always.

My idea:Remove many external disks from pool, save power, save environment :-) Move all important *static* data I do not need online to two different external disks (for safety/duplication). Now, one year later when I want to access those recordings of xyz that my htpc recorded I would like to switch the external disk on and immediately access it via a symlink that resides in one of my shares, \\server\recTV.

(Forget about data being stored on two external disks outisde of the pool, this is just my own precaution. Imagine just one disk for this discussion.)

Is it *SAFE* to create a symlink in say \\server\recTV that points to say E:\recTV that might or might not be online? I do not want WHS to start duplicating data the link points to once disk is online. \\server\recTV is a duplicated folder.Neither do I want to play with links seeing that this is what demigrator chews each breakfast.

I was thinking of using linkd.exe from resource kit but have to much data on server to dare this kind of testing. Would appreciate input from the pro's :-)